Blog Traffic

August 22, 2006

Eleventh Circuit rebuffs various crack arguments

The Eleventh Circuit today in US v. Pope, No. 05-11552 (11th Cir. Aug. 22, 2006) (available here), discussed and rejects a number of constitutional challenges to a long sentence imposed in a crack case. Though the defendant apparently did not directly attack the reasonableness of his sentence, the Pope court discusses post-Booker sentencing standards at some length. And, to its credit, the court describes reasonableness review in decidedly non-guideline terms:

Our reasonableness review is "deferential" and focuses on whether the sentence imposed fails to achieve the purposes of sentencing as stated in § 3553(a). Moreover, we recognize that a range of reasonable sentences exists from which the district court may choose.